7318/19838
Incredible that Croatia didn’t make the last 3 but look like they might come third. Just for those of you that think football can be predicted in advance. And Morocco must be gutted to have reached the last three, but come out fourth. It’s a funny old game.
I woke up this morning to a particularly cold house, though weirdly noticed my Hive app had somehow changed the time the heating came on to 6.30am (I am pretty sure it’s been set for 4.30am before). But even when I put the heating on constant there was no familiar hum of the water tank and radiators creaking into action (the pump is pretty noisy). The heating has only broken down twice this year, so we’re due another one at least. I went down to check it and it was so fucked up there wasn’t even an error message. The thing was turned off with no power at all.
Always at the coldest times (which might be expected) and always at the weekend.
Luckily we have a pretty reliable boiler guy, Dave, who this year sorted out all the atrocities committed by the guys who installed this system to borderline illegal levels. And amazingly he was round to our house by 10am. This time. The fix was pretty simple - the tray where the condensation ends up had frozen up and he just readjusted the pipes so that the condensation would drip on the floor and the boiled sprung to life. Even Dave was a bit bamboozled that some of our water wasn’t working, but agreed with me that the pipes behind the bathroom toilet and sinks are probably unlagged and so close to the wall that they are essentially outside. He reminded me how to turn off the water if the pipes crack. Which would be a terrific end to the year.
I am being sarcastic. It would actually be bad.
Whilst I waited for Dave I took the dog out for a walk and attempted
a stone clear in the snow. This is really pro level stuff, so only listen if you really know what you’re doing with stones.
There were some Chriftmaf miraclef that prove the existence of the Stone Gods and I also found the perfect liquid for melting snow. Also it seems all the dogs in the local area are taking dog berocca. Someone should look into this.
We took the kids to the pub at lunchtime to meet Father Christmas. They are aware that not all Santas you meet are the real Santa and Phoebe was suspicious that St Nick would be in our village and decided to use science to prove it one way or the other. She was going to use the Santa tracker app to see if Santa was in Hertfordshire or not. And his tracker showed him resolutely still at the North Pole throughout. This WAS NOT the real Santa. Proven. Also the Santa’s beard and moustache was hanging down under his mouth, like one of those people who doesn’t wear their Covid mask over their nose. He had got the jolliness down though and I suspect that Santa might have been paid in beer.
The kids didn’t confront him about his non-Santaness though and agreed not to say anything so as not to spoil the magical illusion for the little ones. Phoebe was weirdly shy of Santa though, but perhaps reasonably. Who was this man pretending to be Father Christmas and why?
It’s good to see that the Santa tracker will help us weed up the men pretending to be Santa, for whatever reason. Personally I think they should be jailed.
